


bucky's dog days

by orphan_account



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Dead animals, Misc mental illness, Puppies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7532587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How do you catch a hundredish year old ex assassin with a metal arm and not get your ass handed to you? Have you tried tricking him with a basket of puppies</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. nick

**Author's Note:**

> Post winter soldier, pre civil war, the recently liberated Bucky Barnes is trying to get his shit together. Sam Wilson doesn't really want to Deal with tracking him down, but he is gonna, because he made Cap a promise and Cap has... the flu... or something...

The man who had been the winter soldier cut himself shaving, and then he didn't shave again for nearly a week.

He didn't have to tell himself it was 'just a drop of-' it didn't matter. A little wisp of tissue paper, one blot, its unwelcome color buried under a crush of plastic bags and, later, orange peels.

Sometimes he went to the library.

Sometimes it was just to distract himself in the outdated science of DDT, sometimes it was to pull down a book on gardening and browse until he could practically smell the damp earth, feel the ripeness of a tomato in his hand and the crisp breaking of the skin against his teeth.

Sometimes, it was to walk by the stacks labeled 118.11 through 179.3, marked history, footnote world war two. That was a hot brand. He could practically feel it sizzle on the back of his neck. _Marked._

Sometimes it was to torture himself with newspapers and magazines bound up in plastic. He could pick them up, he could look, but if he fell upon a familiar name and he. Couldn't. Read it. Choking in the middle of his chest.

So he got his news only in snippets from the people on the streets, thinking themselves unobserved, unlistened to. But he heard everything. Everywhere. And when he heard _Sokovia_ , when he heard _Captain America_ , he thought with incredulity that it was real. It was all real.

He had never been lucid for so long, and it wasn't like being awake.

It was knowing you were alive inside the nightmare.


	2. street pizza

The man who had been the winter soldier didn't think much in words, but when he did, it was almost always the same word.

Why?

He was in the open air market, in the sun, buying fruit, but why?

He was in the library, learning about spiders, but why?

For a life that had always had a trajectory, and now had those guidelines slip away, it was- it was like being a cart horse. With blinders on. And then the blinders were gone, and he was as dumb and wordless as the day he was born, and the chaos of the street, the dissonance and cacophony of freedom, was about to run him down.

Street pizza.

There was a dead dog in the street below his window.

He had seen the dog before, wandering stupid and purposeless in and out of the roads. Gunky-eyed, broken-tailed, with the drooping udders that meant puppies somewhere. Meat was expensive, but there was an old woman with very absent-minded chickens living nearby, and when they left their eggs in the overturned bucket by his corner, he made sure the dog got them.

Well, now she was dead. Tongue sticking out. He didn't look too hard. He skirted the smell of death on his way back.

_Dogs made Steve sneeze._

He thought he remembered that. It didn't make it true.

Was it true? Had it ever been true?

It didn't matter.

It was street pizza.

The man who had been the winter soldier rolled his thumbs over his shut eyes and nestled his face into his palms like there was comfort there.

The dog was dead.

Why?


	3. who left this here

Did it need saying that he did a perimeter check every time he woke up?

He did, and he counted all of his ammo. He counted all of his food, down to the last plum. He checked all the places he had secreted weapons: the razor blade slipped into a slit in the wall, the dusty old handgun duct-taped to the bottom of the bed, the makeshift toothbrush shank under the sink, blinding acid disguised in a bottle of olive oil on the counter.

As if he cooked.

Sometimes he did another sweep when he had been awake for a while. Just in case.

That was a symptom of obsessive compulsive disorder, said a book he had taken from the library. Not checked out, taken, slipped under his jacket. He would take it back. He was no thief. But the line to check out books made him sweat.

He often sweated, wearing jackets even in this weather, wearing a hat, his hair compressed against the back of his neck or guarding the sides of his face, but he had to, he had too much to hide. Always a gun in the waistband, always knives ready at the small of his back. Always the metal arm feeling obvious and unsubtle even with gloves. He often thought someone had heard it tick as he moved, and as they gave him an odd look, his first instinct was to gut them and run.

But he didn't, and they looked at him odd, because he looked odd.

And his heart pounded like a drum until the moment had passed.

That was a symptom of generalized anxiety disorder, said the book.

The man who had been the winter soldier stepped over the dead dog on his last perimeter check of the evening, or at least of the hour. The smell was awful, but something made him pay visit. Something, what was it? something compulsive.

"Hello," he said to the dead dog, and then he went up to his room, stripped, had a shower, and sat down and shook uncontrollably under the hot water, shook with the same ferocity of a man electrocuted. He couldn't remember, he didn't remember, but his body remembered.

His book would have called that a panic attack. But by the time his body had given it up, he was too exhausted to call it anything, and instead tried to soothe his panic with stupidity.

_This is normal. This is a recipe for a normal life. This will pass._

But the improvised toothbrush shank, the floor splattered with water, the metal arm, the bumps and ribbons of scar tissue, all said otherwise.

He turned off the shower in disgust. Dumped his old clothes in two inches of water and detergent, dressed again. He went to go do another perimeter check.

He opened his front door and there

was a basket of puppies.


	4. 3 lil piggies

The man who had been the winter soldier pointed his weapon down either end of the hallway. Listened. Nothing. No footsteps. No distant laughter of someone young and drunk walking the side streets. Only the everpresent hum of the summer insects.

One of the puppies sneezed.

He tried not to let panic take him again.

Someone knew he was here.

No - no, he cautioned himself. Somebody knew _somebody_ was here.

He stood stock still in the doorway and tried to convince himself that someone, a neighbor, had noticed him, had noticed the dog, had found the puppies, and left them hopefully to his care. Thinking he would care. They had seen him feeding the dog eggs. They had been watching him. Someone- someone had been watching him-

His heart pounded as if it were a ticking bomb at his feet, instead of the innocent little basket.

He didn't trust that innocence for a second.

But he also knew that if it were Interpol, if it were FBI, there would be no tricky present. The door would have been knocked out. There would be men in body armor carrying guns and batons, trying to overwhelm what they could not otherwise defeat.

Hydra, suggested his running list of threats. Reorganized and come to retrieve its asset.

But why, why play mind games with a mind they had already meticulously, scientifically reduced to rubble?

There were three puppies.

One was white, one was black, and the last one was tan. All had thin, curly little tails like piglets, and the type of floppy ears that threatened to prick up as they grew.

It was a local, handwoven basket. Anonymous.

He bent as if to investigate, letting his hair fall in front of his face as if he were unguarded, burying his gun between the small warm bodies and waited with softly ringing ears for someone to take advantage of his inattention.

No one did.

He took them inside.

-

The man who had been the winter soldier gave the dogs a bath, letting them splash around in his soaking laundry while he pulled ticks and scrubbed off dirt. They were just big enough to make this difficult. He resigned himself to bathing just one at a time while the others ran amuck, pulling apart towels and knocking over his trash.

They weren't lethargic. Someone had been feeding them. But feeding them what?

Time for another trip to the library.


End file.
